Police show off fingerprint system

MIDDLETOWN -- Law enforcement officers will be able to identify suspects quicker -- cutting the search time from weeks or months to hours or minutes -- with a technologically-advanced fingerprint system.

AMY L. ZITKA

Published
12:00 am EDT, Thursday, October 16, 2003

Connecticut State Police, along with representatives from municipal police departments and the Rhode Island State Police, on Wednesday unveiled the new electronic and computerized enhancements to the state's Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

"The State of Connecticut is traditionally a leader in implementing technology," State Police Trooper Roger Beaupre said. "We're continuing that tradition. We're adding cutting-edge technology to AFIS."

"This is another giant step to bring the bad people to where they should be," Public Safety Commissioner Arthur Spada said.

Connecticut and Rhode Island have signed a contract not to exceed $10 million with California-based Cogent Systems to provide the live scan fingerprint system, which will assist in rapid database searches of fingerprints. Officials have been working on the project for three years to get the updated system, and it should be online to all law enforcement agencies in Connecticut and Rhode Island by October 2004, officials said.

"We are very excited to partner with the state of Connecticut and the state of Rhode Island with this project," said AFIS Project Manager Isam Saleh, of Cogent Systems. "The technology will assist law enforcement agencies on all levels to solve crimes. It far exceeds any system in the nation."

Rather than using ink and fingerprint cards, a person will place each finger on a glass plate of a computer scanner and the fingerprint or palm print will come up on the computer screen. The system will be able to automatically determine whether a print is good or if it needs to be redone. Once a good set of tenprints and palmprints are done, they will be sent electronically to the State Police Bureau of Identification's database as well as the FBI database to determine whether there are matches with fingerprints already in the system.

"The system captures 1,000 pixels per inch," Saleh said. The resolution is four times as clear as that of a normal AFIS system, he said. "The system alsoprovides high-speed matching."

No other system is designed to run database searches with palmprints, Saleh said, adding 20 percent more crimes can be solved with the palmprints included. The system, which will have a capacity of 3 million fingerprints and palmprints, will be able to maintain multiple records per person "to ensure better accuracy of the system. Local, state and federal (agencies) are all encompassed in the system."

Besides doing fingerprinting and database checks for criminal cases, federal regulations also require background checks be done on anyone who will be dealing with children, Spada said. "We hope to have 50 stations in Connecticut by next year."

"(AFIS) will benefit all citizens. Not only will it find the guilty, but it will eliminate the cloud over the innocent," Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano said.

"The public perception is we already have these things," said State Rep. Robert Farr, of West Hartford.

"It isn't the case in Connecticut and many states. To bring us into this century, we must make substantial improvements in the process."

With the current AFIS system, which was established in 1994, there are currently 1.8 million sets, of which 250,000 are from Rhode Island. To conduct searches of the databases, fingerprint cards had to be sent out to the agencies to be checked, officials said.

Criminals know how the system works, the legislator said. A person accused of a crime could give a false name, and a police department would let the person out on a promise to appear in court. By the time the fingerprints were matched with the true identity and it was determined other agencies were holding arrest warrants, the suspect could be walking the streets.

"We'll put an end to this when the system is up and running," Farr said. "They might as well give their names, because we'll know who they are."

The new AFIS system will be housed at the state Department of Information Technology in East Hartford, said Capt. Scott Martin, of the State Police Criminal Justice Information Services Section. The information will also be sent to the state Office of Policy and Management and SPBI.

The current AFIS system "lacks certain technological advancements," he said. With a time lapse and backlog of requests, "identification could take weeks to months. The new system will guarantee within hours."